By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, July 1, 2004

Richard Linklater's 1995 "Before Sunrise" opened on a chance meeting between a young American tourist, Jesse (Ethan Hawke), and a French college girl, Celine (Julie Delpy), and ended with a bittersweet parting and a promise of a reunion in Vienna in six months. No letters, no phone calls, no contact, just an impulsive romantic vow and a charmingly naive faith in happy endings.

Linklater, Hawke and Delpy pick up nine years later in "Before Sunset," the older, wiser and just as confused sequel to the lovely brief Vienna romance. Jesse is in a Paris bookstore, his last stop on a tour promoting his novel inspired by that fateful night, when a familiar face and an unsure smile lurking among the bookshelves catches his eye: Celine.

It's the first meeting since that life-changing encounter for the former lovers, who are now 32. Their initial awkwardness eases into a familiar intimacy and they spend an afternoon on a lazy walking tour of Paris as they catch up on their lives.

Jesse and Celine are smart characters with substantial and interesting experiences -- he's a novelist, she's a conservation activist -- and lives that, at least on the surface, sound fulfilling and rewarding. Hawke and Delpy (who collaborated with Linklater on the script) make them warm, engaging people. But this is no "My Dinner With Andre."

Conversation and confession chips away at their facades and they slowly drop their defenses and expose the regrets, frustrations and what might-have-beens that their meeting stirs up.

Hawke, who so often comes off as glib and conceited, carves out a character with a depth created from disappointment and compromise.

Delpy's smiles become increasingly sad, masks to keep her composure from cracking as old embers are fanned back to life.

Snappy retorts and clever remarks have too often been confused for smart talk by American screenwriters.

The dialogue here is deft, intelligent and laced with a sense of humor that is both defensive and revealing, and Linklater's graceful direction flows naturally and easily, giving it all an understated authenticity.

Romantic, real and as generous as it is vulnerable, the art of conversation has rarely been so acute, honest and revealing.